vanced form of Protestantism than the first—Mr. Pocock attributes to deliberate dishonesty on their part; but, as it seems to me, it may be accounted for more naturally, as well as more charitably, by regarding it as the simple result of that natural progress of thought in their own minds, which is apt to be more rapid under the stimulus of party excitement than it is at other times. Something like this appears to be the rational interpretation of the facts of the Edwardian portion of the great religious revolution, if sentimental prepossessions and ecclesiastical theories be laid aside.
When Mary succeeded, in full age and in full possession of her powers, such as they were, and with the Tudor temper and more than the Tudor obstinacy, irritated by a life-long course of ill-treatment and annoyance, a furious reaction was the consequence. But what is of importance for us to notice in this place is that in Mary's government the personal element once more revived, and that the reaction, as we have seen, was almost entirely her own act and deed. Her methods were very much those employed by her father and Cromwell. She bribed the lay lords, deprived the Edwardian bishops, and packed the House of Commons; and when these vigorous methods proved insufficient for her purpose, she supplemented them by purely arbitrary acts of power: and finally she instituted that bloody persecution which filled all England at once with horror by its cruelty, and with disgust and contempt by the baseness with which it glutted itself upon poor, mean, harmless, and ignorant victims—tailors, peasants, cripples, and old women—while it left well-known and noble heretics in Parliament and at the council-board unimpeached and unassailed. The persecution was as fatal a mistake in policy as it was an
